In Part 2 of this series, I discussed how I made the
chassis and drive train. In this
part, I will show you how I wired
the bots and set up the
transmitter and receiver.

Oftentimes, wiring in a bot
can look like a rat’s nest (Figure
1), and be rather daunting to
someone who has never built a
robot before. Fortunately, it’s not
as complicated as it looks.

The wiring diagram (Figure
2) shows where each wire goes
to. Power flows from the battery
on the left to the power on/off
switch first. Since this is a hockey
bot, I used a cheap commercial
on/off switch that had a built-in
LED indicator designed to run on
12V.

A combat bot should use
switches such as those offered by
Team Whyachi, or simply use a
wire link as these are much less
likely to get knocked to the "off"
position in an impact, or fall
apart.

I carefully checked out which
terminal on the switch should be
connected to the battery; it is the
power out and the last one which
is the ground for the LED
indicator. In this switch, they are
marked +, A, and the ground
symbol, respectively. You could
use spade terminals to connect
the leads but I soldered them on
as shown in Figure 3.

Try to stick with red for the
positive (+) wires and black for
the negative return (-) wires. This
reduces the chances you will
short out the battery or connect
the ESCs up the wrong way
which will often result in them
being damaged.

The battery has to have its
own connector so that it can be
removed from the bot for safe
charging. However, some builders
like to solder all the other
connections directly. This saves
weight and space, but makes
replacing any failed component
that much harder — especially